Sunday, May 18, 2014

Reminder: Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Shutdown

On Tuesday, May 20th, Nintendo will be shutting down part of the online infrastructure for the Nintendo Wii and DS/DSi consoles for all regions. A list of games and services affected by the shutdown can be found on the Nintendo website, but I wanted to lay out all the Mega Man and Mega Man-related games right here.

Mega Man Star Force (Pegasus, Leo, Dragon), Mega Man Star Force 2 (Zerker x Ninja, Zerker x Saurian), Mega Man Star Force 3 (Black Ace, Red Joker): Online multiplayer and other online functions will no longer be available. You will no longer be able to register friends for the Brother Band System, a core online component in all three games, nor take advantage of on-line-specific Brother Band features (Link Power in SF2, Multi-Noise Transformations in SF3 and so forth).

Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10: Because the Shop Channel is not affected, you will still be able to purchase DLC for both MM9 and MM10. You will no longer, however, have the ability to register your best times on the leaderboards.

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars: Support for Vs. Mode competition over the internet will no longer be available.

Unofficial Smash Bros. Brawl mods: A number of unofficial Super Smash Bros. Brawlmods feature a handful of Mega Man characters and themes.Despite not being official Nintendo products, corresponding online play will be affected.

Wario Ware D.I.Y: There are some really fantasticMega Manminigames for this game. Unfortunately, after May 20th, you won't be able to download them! Grab 'em while you can!

So that's pretty much it Mega Man wise. Again, the full list of titles are available on the official Nintendo website. Check it out and play those favorites of yours while you can. These last few days are going to fly by!

23 comments:

Only in Star Force 3, which required beating a random Dread Joker/Acid Ace after 20 random matches in a row to get the Online Star. It doesn't count towards unlocking Crimson Dragon SP, but it DOES prevent a random encounter of Crimson Dragon Sigma in the one of the post game areas. Beyond that, nothing completion-related is affected.

In MMSF2 there are 3 gates in the alternate dimension that only open if the player fights 50 Link Battles, has 1000 LP (must have Brothers), and equipped all Indie Frags (must remove Brothers). While they aren't required for the star completion, missing a Star Card and 100000 Zenny is sad...

While it is possible to do it with yourself, one would need to have multiple copies of the game and finish all of them for better status...With MMSF2 and 3, only 1 copy is needed for a "Self-Brother" (or Brother with someone the game is shared) as both have 2 saves, better in MMSF2 as it has different versions, but both need Wi-Fi for this.

Tatsunoko VS Capcom is the one WFC game I'm most sad about. Loved that game since day one & I must say it's probably my fave Wii game & last gen game in general. Practically was glued into my console it's in it so much Ha-Ha. You can assure I'll be on TvC Online til the very end of WFC this week. Pretty sad that also only like a small community of us still plays TvC online faithfully. After the 20th, looks like just local game store Fight Nights & Anime Boston(s) to set up an play casual tourneys :/

Brother Band / Cross Brother Band, trading items between SSR and Bokura no Taiyou DS, as well as battling can all be done via local wireless as long as you have 2 DS'. I've been doing this since 2008ish and works much faster than WFC using 1 DS.

You do realize this is only because of the GameSpy incident, right? If GameSpy weren't shutting down right now, we'd be having WFC for a lot longer than this. Why do you think so many other older games are losing Wi-Fi on other systems?

I still blame Nintendo. They shouldn't have been affiliated with American companies to begin with if that is the case of server hosting for WFC games if they are primarily a Japanese based company. If the Japanese games weren't affected, then I would have no issue.

When I mention Nintendo making bad choices. The whole approach they have on going next gen was twisted and absurd with the Wii U as a whole. Turning off services with the Wii didn't make things any better in light of WFC shutting down and makes them the bad guy by everyone's book.

Don't even get me started on the absurd idea of DS Virtual Console. All they want is money games you already own, instead of the smart reasonable choice making a GB Player esque add-on for the system. Another bad choice by a dying company with bad hardware sales. Iwata should step down.

Anyone who's sad about not being able to play TvC on Wii can still play online via Dolphin emulation on PC. I know a guy who is a high level TvC player and he said that with the proper setup he can do anything that he normally could on the Wii. At that point, it's more a matter of getting everyone else in the know, so that you have people looking to play regularly.